Terry Francona Quotes on Time (9 Quotes)

I know he's made some errors, but I still consider him reliable. You watch him on defense and you wonder if his legs are sore or if his back is sore. At the same time, his bat is so active. When a guy is dragging a little, that's not usually when you see his bat get aggressive.

He's going to be a huge part of the Red Sox, maybe starting tonight. I think it's important ... I think it's great for his development to be here now. Anything he learns now and any time he pitches can't hurt his development.

Yeah, maybe that's part of the reason I have some feelings or sympathy for people because of what they go through. At the same time, we're still playing them and trying to do right by everybody. We'll continue to do that as well as we can. We ask guys to show up and be professional and try to do that back to them, regardless of the situation.

With him in the bullpen, the stability was really, really good. Even the games Schill had a tough time, we didn't have to use Mike Timlin so often at a time when Foulke went down. We might have run into some problems, but we didn't. It was really good for us. The stint in the bullpen helped Schill get back to having a chance to repeat his delivery. It worked out well for everybody. At the time, he just wasn't ready to be a starter. We tried to time it to when Foulke came back. We had to get him seven starts. Just three wouldn't be fair. But we said all along we wanted to get him back in the rotation.

I bet he does. I think he knows how we feel. I don't know how many guys in his situation would have volunteered to go to the bullpen. I would say very few. He gave us a lot of stability at a time when it didn't look like we had much.

I don't know about unique I think he's good. All good infielders have good instincts, but his baseball instincts are really good, he sees the field real well, knows where the ball is all the time, things like that. Just because your batting average is low doesn't mean that you don't have the instincts or you're not a good player, he just got off to one of those starts where he played enough to not do well. We've all been through it. For whatever reason, he just had a tough time getting untracked.

They are considered part-time players. Longevity is important. He has put up tremendous numbers and his timing for some hits are sure to help. In the end, it is production over time. I don't know if anyone is better right now than he is at what he does.

He's one of the best hitters in the game, if not the best. The timing of some of his hits has made him extraordinary. ... When we need him to be that good, he's answered almost every time. It's fun to watch.

He has an explosive fastball, a hard breaking ball and we haven't figured him out very well yet. We are certainly going to have to because with them in our division, we are going to face him a number of times. I think he's 22 so he is probably not going to retire any time soon.